Mobium International Survey Finds American Business Marketers in Denial About Plummeting Perception of Their Brands Overseas

2009-07-13

A first of its kind, -three-year-long assessment of national and international perceptions of American business-to-business brands found that U.S. foreign policy has had a significant detrimental effect on American business brands the results of which many American marketers seemingly deny. Nine out of ten U.S. businesses foresee a continuation of business as usual overseas, while 20 percent of overseas buyers said they plan to drop American brands altogether. The survey was conducted by Mobium, an integrated business branding firm, between October 2005 and October 2008.

A majority of both U.S. and non-U.S. respondents believe American business brands have been affected by U.S. foreign policy—70 percent within the U.S. and 74 percent outside. And almost everyone agrees that foreign policy has affected U.S. brands adversely—87 percent within the U.S. and an astounding 93 percent abroad.

Personal relationships appear to be the stabilizing factor to maintaining the international relationships that remain intact.  Half of both U.S. marketers and foreign buyers believe their personal relationships have changed. But two thirds believe they have changed for the better. This may be a way of saying that the foreign policy of the United States between 2005 and 2008 was trumped in some cases by direct, personal, business relationships.

"What's disturbing is the gap in perception that U.S. and non-U.S. respondents have of the future of brand relationships" says Gordon Hochhalter, Managing Partner at Mobium.

98 percent of U.S. respondents feel the companies they do business with abroad want to continue their relationships and 96 percent believe their companies will continue to do business abroad with their current customers and partners.  Unfortunately 19 percent of overseas respondents said their companies planned to replace the relationships they have with American business brands with ones not based in the U.S. And almost a third of those (32 percent) said U.S. foreign policy is directly responsible for that change.

Mobium received responses from 1,867 people; of that, 1,378 were identified as U.S. business marketers and 489 identified themselves as business buyers of U.S. brands who work overseas. 85 percent of U.S. survey respondents conduct business abroad, 30 percent in Europe, 22 percent in Asia, 20 percent in the United Kingdom, 10 percent in Australia, 4 percent in Africa and another 4 percent in the Middle East. 10 percent conduct business in all of those regions.  While 30 percent of respondents sell products and services overseas, 21 percent provide marketing services to foreign companies, 19 percent have offices abroad, and 15 percent outsource services to other countries. Another 10 percent have products manufactured abroad and 7 percent obtain products from overseas.

A complete report and analysis is available at www.mobium.com



About Mobium
Mobium is a full-service integrated business branding and communications firm specializing in business-to-business integrated communications, branding, relationship marketing, database marketing, interactive marketing, and information architecture. The company was named agency of the year in 2003 by the Business Marketing Association and has been recognized as one of the top three business-to-business agencies its size for five consecutive years and the Top Agency of 2006 by Crain Communications' BtoB Magazine. In 2008, the Business Marketing Association named Mobium the Creative Team of The Year. www.mobium.com